THE BURDEN OF CONFORMING TO CULTURE AND TRADITION: THE AFEMAI WOMAN’S EXPERIENCE.
BY
Remi AKUJOBI{PhD}
(Female)
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND LITERARY STUDIES
COLLEGE OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
COVENANTUNIVERSITY, OTA. OGUNSTATE
The paper is on Gender studies
ABSTRACT
Women are said to be builders of homes, they are the rockers of cradle(s), and they enrich a nation with their reproduction prowess. Women are also said to be lifters of their men’s spirit especially with their companionship, It is in this light that this paperattemptsan understanding of the ways in which gender and its attendant problems impede on the social standing and general development of the woman in society. It pays particular attention to the Afemai women in Estakor of Edo state and interrogates the culture of the people of this area within the confines of gender and power relations Overall, the paper will address the gender question from the socio-cultural perspective.
The paper uses observation through indirect participation and interview to gather information used in this research and some of the findings are embedded in the paper.
Key Words: BURDEN OF CULTURE AND TRADITION
INTRODUCTION
“Oh! What faithless little creatures girls are?” Bernard Shaw(1898).
There is no denying the fact that gender is fast becoming an important discourse not only in literary circles but in all human endeavours.The issue of gender and its attendant problems did not actually find expression in Africa until very recently and the awareness of the importance of gender in all human endeavours makes it very difficult for one to engage in any discourse without a particular to reference to gender.
Gender, as it were, has changed the shape of human discourse and is now a recognized phenomenon. It is crucial in determining the production, circulation and consumption of any discourse today (Showalter 1989:1) and because of this importance, be it science, philosophy, development arts and others, one is tempted to see all human enterprise on gender line. Gender, to Showalter therefore encompasses speech and in every language (whether Afemai, Igbo,Hausa, Swahilli), gender is a grammatical category and it is all that humanity stands for or against. Some theories are examined in other to address the issue of gender especially as it affects the Nigerian woman.
One of such theories is the one propounded by de Beauvoir in TheSecondSex {1973}, which says that“one is not born, but rather becomes a woman”. In de Beauvoir’s opinion gender, is an aspect of identity onegradually acquires so it is no longer possible to attribute the values and social functions of woman to biological necessity since one can become thegender chooses. Butler( 1986), Zimmerman (1991), Dunker (1993), Hooks (1985}, all subscribe to this idea as they contend that there is no such thing as one being created with a particular gender and the act of becoming entails a cultural interpretation of bodies, so if one’s culture sees one as a man then you are. If you have all the features of a man and your culture says you are a woman, so be it.
In this case, physical build has absolutely nothing to do with gender interpretation It is what onedoes with gender that determines the gender one belongs.
This paper may not concern itself with de Beauvoir’s theory of “becoming” but what this paper is interested in is the cultural interpretation of the woman and how this interpretation helps in demeaning the woman and all that she stands for in society.
This paper will appraise the position of the woman in society and see how this position enables the phenomenology of victimization.
Since primordial times, the woman has always been oppressed, victimized and dominated. Men have always enjoyed ordering the woman back to the home. To the
African man, the emancipation of the woman (whether through western education, the acquisition of a voice, economic empowerment, and political space etc) is a real menace. The saying, “give them one inch and they take a mile” is used to cajole and subjugate the woman. This makes one wonder why men are so afraid to compete with women, why they consider women as dangerous to their existence. It bits ones imagination why men are working tirelessly to permanently keep the woman at the background. This may sound like a broken record but the emphasis is not out of place when one peeps into the condition of the woman in society. The atrocities perpetuated against the woman are so very much that if nothing is done to remedy same, the development the nation desperately yearns for may not be attained.
To be dominated, oppressed and victimized is to be eliminated from vital aspects of human endeavour and the woman has had to contend with this for long now.
If she dares challenge the unequal power relation in society either by acquiring western education, she is given all sorts of names. She is labeled “western and immoral”. If she tries to conform to traditional and society’s norms, values and rules, she still does not escape labeling as she is referred to as “rural and dirty”. Oppression of the woman therefore is as ancient as mankind. The irony of this is that the society ruled by men preaches change but this same society has refused to relax its oppression, domination and victimization of the woman. The religion, tradition, culture, rules invented by men portray the wish for domination so one can easily say that these three things, oppression, domination and victimization, like racism stem from the same source, the urge for one group to dominate the other and these three are as ancient as mankind.
THE IMAGE OF THE BLACK WOMAN
The woman is so bad and evil that Plato inhis wisdom remembered to thank his gods daily first that he was created free and not enslaved, second, that he was created a man and not a woman (Ruth 1980). The woman is so low that Aristotle referred to her as a “misbegotten male” because she is “weak and cold” (Ruth 1980:98,Dunker 1992).
Aristotle sees the woman as having a natural deficiency because she lacks “certain qualities”, so for this reason, the woman is “afflicted with natural defectiveness”. The woman is so evil that Aquinas sees her as “defective and sinful” and so should be seen only as a helper not in cultural works but in reproduction, after all women are just biological assistants.(Ruth 1980:98, Hidalgo1993).
God in his infinite wisdom designed that the woman shall be under the “man’s power” and this is usually used by men to mask the woman’s oppression. The concept of nature makes the woman a natural wife and mother. This may be why Dunker (1992:4) says that the,
Social and culturalnorms which suits the status-quo
often masquerade (themselves) as eternal, immutable differences
we are not locked into biological prisons and the breaking
point of nature is being itself.
Becoming a particular gender therefore may not be unconnected to an active process of appropriating, explaining and re-interpreting received cultural possibilities as one may just organize past and future cultural norms in a way to suit one’s needs by an active style of living one’s body.
However, the cry for equality may be a waste of time and energy especially when one listens to people like Gregory who says “where there is no sin, there is no inequality”(Ruth 1980:145) and since our world is not right in so many ways, (after all, righteousness exhort a nation) there is no room for equality in this society. The woman is so weak that Saint Augustine believes that she is “naturally of less strength and dignity than man” for the “agent is always more honourable than the patient”. To him therefore, the woman is neither “decisive nor constant” (Ruth 1980:145).
The woman, in this vein is said to have instigated misfortune and disaster in the beginning, remember Eve in the Garden of Eden, remember Portipher’s wife in Egypt?
And because of the wickedness of the woman, she deserves to be punished. For this reason also, the place of the woman in the scheme of things is justified.
The image of the woman is fraught with contradictions, there are images moving the opposite direction, she is perfect and beautiful and at the same time, awful, stupid and contemptible. (Fuss 1989). In looking at the problems of gender in both intellectual enterprise and in life, one is tempted to say that these problems affect the progress of woman and the development of the society as a whole but happily today, things are changing as writers, scholars and critics, women and men whose efforts are to asphyxiate the position that a woman can never the same as man. In their various fields, these writers are dismantling society’s norms and values that have hitherto hindered the progress and development of the woman. They are removing the image of the mammy, the other, docile, weak, and emotional, the image of the substandard, incompetent, petty,evil,lacking in responsibility and moral aptitude, base, treacherous, manipulative female. Writers and critics such as de Beauvoir,Waugh, Davies,Opara,Ogundipe-Leslie, Schipper, Mortimer, Emecheta, Nwapa, Ba, Alkali,Christian, Walker, Lorde, Hooks and so many others are carving out the “self” from the “other” by creating positive image for the woman in society. The woman is no longer made to drape these images around her. Her dual personalities, her dual natures are now viewed as desirable, fascinating and wonderful and no longer seen as destructive and dangerous.
THE AFEMAI WOMAN AND THE BURDEN OF CONFORMING TO
CULTURE AND TRADITION.
Both men and women have written a lot about women and their social standing(Boyce-Davies 1994, Hill-Collin 1990, Malumfashi and Yakasai 2002, Adeleke 1996, Austen-Peters 1995, 1999, Badejo 1998, Ezeigbo 1997 Oriaku 1996 and others).They all agree that the woman has a right as well as a role to play in society aside from being a mother, a wife and a keeper of the home. The African woman is seen by critics both a victim and an actor. The African woman is not only a recipient of all the blows thrown by her male-dominated society, but also an active participant in the perpetuation of these brutal treatments she gets in society. To the Afemai woman, her major mountains are illiteracy, tradition,polygamy,motherhood,herself and her society.
The Afemai woman is basically not literate in the western sense of the word,like any other woman in Nigeria; her education was not given priority especially by the colonial authority that mainly fostered the education of the man because it needed man power for its administration.A woman in this society is given what is known as basic education by the mother of the girlespecially on how to be a good wife to her husband, a good mother to her children, a warmer of her husband’s bed and a keeper of her husband’s home, this kind of education is seen as good enough hence Adah in Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen(1977)only needs “a year or two” (p9) to learn all she needs to be a good wife and mother. The same goes for Awa in Alkali’s Still-Born whose primary seven is just good enough for to have a fruitful life(3). This education is considered very basic and good enough for the woman, anything more than that is invading men’s domain.
The woman is not expected to be seen at the village square contributing to male discussion, she must not be seen arguing with her lord, the payer of her bride price, the father of her children and the defender of her cause. The woman must not be heard talking about going to a formal school when her brothers have not all been educated. She is expected to sacrifice her space for her brothers by quietly going to marry and the money got from such deal is spent on the boys. If by any chance she is stubborn enough like Adah in Second Class Citizen and Li in The Sill-born to smell a western school, she is condemned to a life one can never imagine, except such a woman emigrates to another community because she will be seen as a rebel, an outcast, of cause, no mother will ever allow her son to marry such a woman because her eyes are just “too open” for the man. She is too western for the would-be mother-in-law.
Tradition is another problem the Afemai woman must face up to. The woman in this society is expected to adhere to set down rules, values tradition of the community. Tradition subdues the woman; it is like a veil that the woman must wear, it is like a head-rag that the woman must put on for her to be seen to be conforming and most times, conforming to tradition of the land does not favour the woman. The tradition that says that a woman must notown anything for herself and in the cause of the man’s death, the woman is not expected totouch or eat anything that belongs to the man. The woman must not even contest the injustice done to her because it a taboo to do so, such a tradition eternally condemns the woman.She is condemned to a life of squalor; she is forced to begin again even if she had worked very hard to help the man acquire thewealth.
A tradition that says that a woman must be shaved completely when her husband dies and the water used in bathing the corpse be given to the woman to drink just to be sure she did not kill the man. Atradition that says that the woman must not own any property, no money of her own, no jewelries of her own, everything belongs to her master, the man, even the children.
A tradition that says if a man dies and the woman is still young, her husband’s brother can inherit the woman whether or not she likes it. The tradition that stipulates the woman’s tooth must be broken during pregnancy to show her loyalty to her husband is debasing. The tradition that still subscribes to female circumcision which is carried out when the woman is seven months pregnant to prevent infidelity is obnoxious.
This vision of the Afemai woman reduces her to a mere chattel, a slave, a living dead to appropriate Emecheta in The Slave Girl. In all these, one sees marriage as one tool used to subjugate the woman in Afemai land as it limits the woman’s perception of herself, it obscures her identity. In marriage, the woman is reduced to just biological assistant, she is seen as the “mule of the world”, she is the carrier of theburden of the society, the doer of all the “shit work” and when she is considered not to be performing, she is labeled “lazy “and a “witch”. The woman is expected to cook the man’s meals whether or not she is given money for such venture and ifshe refuses may be because of no money, she is seen to be neglecting her marital duties.
The woman in Afemai land receives all manner of insults on her person. She is burdened with not only looking after her children, she is food on their table, she is clothes on their backs, she is school demands, she is everything to her children and her in-laws. If the woman is not doing all these, then she isnot a good woman and she has not “come to stay”.
Polygamy is another problem facing the Afemai woman. A typical Afemai man is a polygamist as he will always need more hands for his farm land, so he marries more than one wife and hatches children he cannot even care for.So as expected, there is competition in the home and in most cases, the women use diabolical means to undo their rivals.
Motherhood is another thing to look at in that it is very important to the African woman. The process of motherhood has its root in tradition. Christian (1984:212) sees motherhood as “the only concept in history that has been constant”. Diop glorifies the mother throughout his work. Mbiti (1970:144) recognizes the concept as being “central to African philosophy and spirituality”. (Rich 1976) highlights the reality of motherhood and concludes that it is under the control of men Emecheta dwells so much on motherhood especially in her The Joy of Motherhood(1979) and Second Class Citizen(1977). Nwapa mirrors this same concept in Efuru. No matter the skills, the primary function of the woman is that of motherhood hence in Afemai land, this concept is regarded as sacred. Any woman without a child is seen as dead, a barren woman in Afemai land is considered incomplete, she is what Mbiti (1970:144) refers to as “the dead end of human life…”.Motherhood, its joys and sorrows go hand in hand in a particular societyand a woman without a child for her husband is a failed woman. For this reason, motherhood as a concept and an institution is critical to the Afemai woman as well as theAfrican tradition
The other problem tearing at the Afemai woman is her society which is still very backward. The level of literacy in Afemai land is relatively low, the average Afemai man or woman depends on the sayings and practices of old. He/ she still refersconstantly to his or her ancestor and looks to him for guidance. The ancestors and practices of old are yard sticks for measuring what is good or bad in this society.